


safe, so far from heaven

by royalbees



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Leverage
Genre: Canon-Type Violence, Magic Realism, Multi, casual discussion of murder, non-chronological storytelling, unreliable narrators probably, weird power issues i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 01:25:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalbees/pseuds/royalbees
Summary: Doors open and close.fusion, canon-type violence.Heresy.  Gods, according to their nature.  pretentious  idfic.





	1. eliot spencer, closing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spencer, beloved of the great god tash

 

_“You a djinn?” Eliot asks, once._

_“What do you wish for, Eliot?” the monster asks._

_He's never forgotten that its beak drips blood. He remembers what men said about djinn: never think you're smarter than them._

_“Nothin,” Eliot says. “A Bud. Rich fucks don't drink Budweiser.”_

_“Ah,” the hawk says._

 

It started in the desert. Isn't that where all gods begin and end? 

(Well. It started with poison rings. It ended (as every story must, I am sorry to tell you) when they all died, but it started in east, deep in the desert.) 

Weird shit bloomed in the desert; you learned that pretty damn quick, near as quick as how to take a shit in baking hot sand and how to sleep with one ear open, ready to run for it. The Army taught Eliot to kill, but the desert taught him killing, the dirty stinking business of it when you were too tired to care and everything felt too real to be real. 

He got separated from his platoon in 02; he wandered half naked through the rock and the wind for two days before an old man in a faded Beatles t-shirt found him. 

The man was barefoot. He gave Eliot water, watched him with unblinking golden eyes. (He could do that, Eliot knew, because it was true that he had the head of a great tawny eagle, the cruel, crooked beak of a raptor. It was also true that his beard was long and dark, and it fell across his chest in a curly, oiled sheaf.) 

Weird shit bloomed in the desert. 

"You're not going to die, son," the eagle told him. 

"Probably soon, but not yet," Eliott had agreed. At the time, he'd been pretty sure it was a hallucination. Didn't help that the old man picked him up (eliot has a vague, confused memory of trying to yell “m not a girl, can walk” and being set on his feet, waking up later cradled in the hawk’s arms as it walks through the sand, stars cold and bright above them) and took him to a mud-and-sand hut planted on the backside of a dune with no water in sight. When they went in, Eliot shook sand out of his clothes and it fell in little rills, ripples, on the mosaic of jeweled tiles. 

Here's the thing that Eliot's never tried explaining to anyone else: the old man in the Beatles t-shirt, he had a perfectly normal face - beard, thousand laugh-lines around his eyes and his mouth, had the most beautiful smile Eliot's ever seen on man or woman, only nearly matched by Parker when she's in free fall - at the same time that he had the head of no kind of hawk Eliot's ever seen or heard of then or since. Hawk and man, same time. Weird shit. 

At the time, of course, Eliot had figured he was dying. People hallucinated when they were dying. That was the only reason he had for why he’d gone along with all of it. 

The hut wasn't like that. Outside, in the desert, it was a shitty little mud-and-daub place that looked like it'd be about a hundred and forty degrees inside: you ducked through the door and you got to a couple of rooms full of sweet, pure air, cool tiles set with emeralds and rubies. Pictures that explained the shitty stuff that'd happened in your childhood, the hard shit, without lying about it, in a way that made sense. 

_"It stank," he said, once, and "it smelled like coming home."_

_"what, apple pie and horse crap?" Parker had asked, once, bright and curious._

__

__

_"Yeah," Eliot'd said. "No. Not those specific smells, but yeah."_

_"What, then?" Hardison had asked._

_"I dunno, Hardison, you have a couple near-death hallucinations and try tellin’ me what they smelled like, damnit,” Eliot had said, and then felt bad because Hardison might have hallucinated a little bit, down in that coffin, so he punched Hardison on the arm, gently enough to mean sorry, and of course Hardison yelled bloody murder like he’d actually been hit when it’d just been a little love tap._

Eliot's never been able to remember what those mosaics actually looked like. The army said _hallucinations_ and the army said _substance abuse_ and the army said _combat fatigue_. That's probably all true: above all, Eliot is pragmatic, and in the real world, men don't have the heads of giant hawks and houses are never bigger on the inside than the out. 

The old man with the head of a raptor spoke to Spencer for a time after that, and told him many things that the gods tell men when they stumble across old gods in old places. Later, Eliot would tell Damien Moreau some of the things that the hawk-headed man told him; later still, he would say "you get it, though," to Parker, who would nod, streetlights shining off her naked biceps, in the dark, as they stared at the shallow ceiling of a hotel. 

 

Later: 

"You can't do that, you can't _do that_ ," Eliot had snarled, ready to shove sense into Moreau's fat pig-head with his fists if he goddamn well had to, because - 

"I didn't know you cared, love," Moreau drawled. 

Eliott really didn't like Moreau, first time he got hired on. The guy had no control over his own men; he'd been going over blueprints with Moreau at a table next to the huge blue infinity pool, thinking that this rich asshole was like ten other rich assholes who thought they were hot shit and would be dead or in jail in another two years. 

Chanterelle was the only one who'd told him, who'd helped him: "ask for something," she'd said, in the kitchen, injecting vodka into a watermelon with a clinical, dispirited eye. Eliot had been dicing, drifting on the sharp, sweaty smell of onions and not thinking about the crisp sound a knife made when you sliced carrots into rounds. Idiots said it sounded - it felt - like cutting through fingers, but that was because they were idiots. Carrots sounded like bone snapping; a knife punching through skin and gristle and bone had a completely different feel, in the hand. "He won't trust you until you ask for something." 

"He buys the gear I need," Eliot offered. Her hair had been a little darker than his, shot through with five-hundred-dollar artificial highlights that gleamed like brass in the sun streaming through the skylight. She'd been wearing a nightgown, silk, white and heavy, and her feet were bare. 

"No," she said. "Something expensive. Once you can't -" she stopped, changing her mind, and went with "Once he feels appreciated, he'll calm down." She shrugged. The Armani slipped loose over her thin, sun-starved shoulder. "Do whatever you want."

He'd thought: _i can’t owe this asshole anygoddamnthing, i won't be able to crawl out of this if i owe him._

And then he'd had second thoughts, which was why Eliot didn’t do second thoughts so often: _i wouldn’t have to worry about gettin’ out ever again_. It’d be done. Finished. 

He didn’t quite take a bullet for Moreau. He killed the guy who took the shot, though, and wound up screaming in the asshole’s face about idiots who hired bodyguards and ignored their totally reasonable requests. 

Bout halfway through yelling, Eliot realized that he was yelling at a fuckin’ arms dealer like he cared whether the guy lived or died, like Moreau was a fellow marine, and that he was almost certainly about to get fired. Well. He could get out of the mansion, at least; Moreau’s security really was shitty, he didn’t think he’d have to kill more than one or two men, just to prove that he was serious about it, and then he might not be able to pick up jobs in this line of work for a while, but hell, he’d been tired of working as glorified muscle for a while. He’d find something else. “Jesus fuck,” he said, trying to put as much disgust in his voice as he could, even though it was too late, nobody who didn’t give a shit yelled at the boss: “do whatever the fuck you want, I’m out, I don’t work like this. Sloppy shit is bad for business.” 

“No,” Moreau said. “You did your job. He was watching Eliot’s face, _seeing_ him, bright-eyed, and that was no good, that was a bad fucking sign. “I’ll triple your fee; you’re right, my security is shit. Fix it.” 

"Fuck you," Eliot said. Watched the line of Moreau's jaw clench, just once. “I wanted real money, I wouldn't be taking side gigs with rich assholes playing gun runner.”

“I believe in paying people what they're worth,” Moreau said, crisply. “Sit down, for god’s sake, unless you're going to punch me in the face. Have a beer.”

He'd threw the Wildcats XXtreme bottle and Eliot had caught it overhand; he hadn't seen that label since he'd been seventeen and sneaking the beer out into the cornfields. Never thought someone would've bothered to find a sweet old memory from home and poison it like that. He popped the cap on his belt buckle to give him time to think.

“I use my real name,” he said, finally. “Never had a problem with that before. People usually understand, keep it friendly.”

“ _Are_ we having a problem?” Moreau asked. He smiled, nasty; like he and Eliot were sharing a joke. “I was being friendly, Spencer. I thought you might've been homesick. You're a hard man to shop for.” 

“And if I walk out now?” Eliot asked. 

“I'd be disappointed,” Moreau said. “You're one of the best, and I like the best. Still.” He opened his hands, expansively. 

“You ain’t bein friendly, you’re bein’ an asshole,” Eliot said. 

“Is that a deal-breaker?” Moreau asked, and goddamn it, he was one of those men who didn’t ask questions until he knew the answers. The answer, of course, was “no, course not,” but Eliot didn’t say anything. Drank his beer. 

 

In hindsight, Eliot knows that he could've run then, might've gotten away clean. That's mostly why he didn't. 

 

 

Later: 

 

"I didn't think you fucked men," Moreau said, quietly, in a dark room that smelled of peat and alcohol, laughing, laughing against the back of Eliot's neck, as Eliot stretched into the touch. "Chapman says you don't fuck men."

"Just cause I ain't fuckin' him," Eliot had said, because he didn’t want to talk about why he fucked men or what kind of men he fucked. “Done prancing around back there, princess? Need a little - “ and had to stop, grunt with the force of it, because Eliot might rise to every challenge, but Moreau *demolished* his challengers, and that’s what it felt like, *vicious* burn, nowhere near enough prep, just cruel enough to work for him. Working for both of ‘em, sounded like. Well. Good. Good. Least Eliot knew they could work together for a while before this blew up in his face. 

All he was doing was burning every bridge, ruining it all; he still sounded exactly like Eliot Spencer. Damn. Wasn't that a surprise? "Come on, _Damien_ ," because nobody had ever accused him of waffling, once he'd made up his mind, and he had to have somewhere to call home, something, even if it was Moreau, Moreau might be the only person worse than Eliot, the only one who deserved Eliot's filthy boots and blood-stiff jeans in his bed, nowadays. Eliot knew himself well enough to know that he'd never be able to give up the account in Cairo, the Jeep in Texas. He couldn't give them up, so he had to make them inaccessible some other way. Moreau was just about the worst thing that Eliott could do this week, so why not, why the fuck not, dive in headfirst because at least he knew what lurked in _this_ dark water. 

"Oh," Moreau breathed, sloppy with joy, fuck, god _damnit_ , why'd he have to be smart, "no worries, treasure." 

“Chanterelle used to be FBI,” he’d told Moreau, later. “She still moves like she’s got a gun.”

“She never stopped being FBI,” Moreau had said. “You have a marvelous eye for detail, cowboy.” 

Eliot hadn’t paid attention to the tenses. Not until he’d headed out to the kitchen for breakfast, seen the blood, realized just what he’d done. 

“You didn’t think I’d let her _go_ ,” Moreau had murmured, too close, already under Eliot’s skin: “cowboy, be *reasonable*. She knew the risk when she took the job.” 

Eliot spent the next two weeks varying degrees of drunk. He shot five men, killed two of them. Moreau watched him through it all, eyes hot with delight. It's the worst week of Eliot's life. 

"Yes," Moreau said, "exactly," and at the time, Eliot gave himself fifteen seconds to think about what Janey would say if she could’ve seen him. 

 

Still later: 

 

Eliot had, in the recent past, killed people for disrespecting Moreau the way he does. 

He didn't do anything as stupid as ask about it, but Damien sighed over peach bellinis at ten in the morning after Eliot told him how stupid it was to waste two weeks on the island. Business didn’t wait. 

"You're more valuable than any of them," Damien said. "I'd have to go to hell to replace you, delight, and I don't feel like making the trip." 

"Doesn't make you any less of an idiot," Eliott grunted. There’d been no point in showing weakness, in turning his face away, but he could feel how hot he'd been running. It’d been a symptom of that time of his life, sick on the way Moreau watched him, feverish; of course it didn’'t end well, but Eliott was never the one who could’ve stopped it. He needed someone to hold the steering wheel; all he could do was hit the gas or brakes. 

Fine, fine, fine; let it be fine, let them all go to hell together. 

 

*****

 

Two years later, Eliot ducked into a portapottie and tripped over the lip of the dais. 

When he looked down, he saw what he was already (in his heart, in his sinking gut) expecting, emeralds bigger than two fists set into tiles that shine like gold in the light of the oil lamps. 

The man with the hawk's head and the beard was there, naked in a steaming hot spring. He'd looked younger, that time. Maybe Eliot had been older. There were golden beads - soft, heavy, warm to the touch, Eliott knew, even though there's no way he could know that - threaded into his beard. The hawk's beak gleamed bloody. "Come," the man said. "You're filthy." 

Eliot had a little scratch on one bicep outside: in there it didn't even sting and he’d been pretty sure that it would’t leave a scar. Blood dripped from his Henley. He’d left bootprints across the soft gold set into the floor. The cuffs of his jeans had gone a soggy purple-brown halfway up the knee. 

There hadn’t seemed to be much point in stating the obvious. He'd killed a lot more people since the last time he had this hallucination. 

Yeah, Gutierrez shot that man to death eight years ago in the Afghani desert. Yeah, it was just a hallucination. Elliott spat on the floor; there'd been blood in his spit and it’d bubbled like real spit and sunk into the grout. "There's three ex-KGB about to come through the door with about six semiautomatics between 'em," Elliott said. 

"No," the man said. "Not that door." He had been younger. 

"Cut the bullshit," Eliot growled. "Whaddya mean not that door, they're right behind me -"

"They'll open a door and find an empty privy," the hawk said. "You knew that, though."

"Guess I did," Eliot said. He’d dropped his guns. The hawk-headed man watched him. Eliot had known what it meant, when a man watched him like that. He's still not sure what it means when something impossible watches you like that. "Last time I saw somethin' like you, I was dying." 

"Yes," the man said. He’d clasped Eliot by the forearm, drew him into the bath: the water steamed fragrant and too familiar for words. “Last time you saw me, you _were_ dying.” 

"Am I dyin' now?"

"No." 

Time passed. Eliot could never say how long he spent there, floating. 

"How long will you stay with Damien Moreau, child?" 

"I'm no child." The hawk waited, silent. "I can't leave, now," Eliot told it. Him. "You know what I've done." He hadn’t needed to say that there was no walking away from what he’d done. The hawk already knew that. 

"You are welcome here," the hawk said. "if you choose."

"Can't stay _here_ ," Eliot said. "It ain't for people like me."

The man kissed him. He didn’t know what the hawk had done. He’d braced, of course, because he’d expected a kick to the gut. It hurt, sure, but like yoga or physical therapy; the pain meant something being put right. 

Later, the man said “if you won’t be healed, love, then be free.”

“Too late for all’a that,” Eliot’d told the hawk. He’d closed his eyes instead of looking at the hawk: in the grand scheme of things, it’d been way down there on the scale, but still fucking weird, to look at the man with his oiled beard and wet, red mouth and know that in some way, that had still been an alien, bright-eyed hawk staring at him. 

“It wouldn’t kill you. It only feels as if it will, now, but it will scar.” 

“ _Moreau’ll_ kill me,” Eliot had said, patiently. “My sister. Her family. I got people.” 

“Moreau owes me a debt.” The man’s hands had been firm, on Eliot’s shoulders. “And he knows he has far outspent what I have given him.” 

“Can’t get out now,” Eliot’d said, gesturing vaguely to his sopping clothes. Blood had puddled on the bright gold of the tiles, outside the bath. “You’re too late by about two years, friend.” 

“Look at me,” the hawk had said, and the man regarded him soberly, the hawk with its beak dripping blood: “if you won’t be healed, and you won’t be free, then be _gone from him_ , Eliot Spencer.” 

 

+++

 

_Many years later, he’ll see the hawk._

_“I found you a lodestone,” the hawk tells him._

_“I ain’t some fuckin dog needs a leash,” Eliot says, prickling anger because that’s a lie: he does, he always will: his kind of dangerous, he can be alone or have someone at the wheel, guiding him through the night._

_“No,” the hawk agrees. “Men have tried to leash you, I believe. That’s not - right, though.” One brilliant orange eye fixes him in its glare. “A compass in the desert, though; that is right, isn’t it?"_


	2. eliot, half-open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sweet Master Doctor, learned Master Doctor, who ever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back._
> 
>  
> 
> or: damien moreau once did a favor for a woman dressed all in green. it didn't end well.

Eliot'd spent an hour looking into what the woman in green wanted him to retrieve before he barged straight into Moreau's penthouse. They'd taken over most of a hotel; it had been summer, the air hot and sweet with the scent of lantea. “Why the fuck does she want us to get _this shit_ , though?” Eliot had asked. Glaring at the papers made no difference; he couldn’t square this circle. 

“Good morning to you, too. Most people would be glad for an easy job,” Moreau’d said, dryly, without opening his eyes. “Go on, darling, you’re done here.” 

The redhead (Ruby; she’d been studying for a degree in marketing, before Moreau had found her) stretched, languidly, and tipped out of the bed. She was _gorgeous_ ; whoever’d done the work on her breasts was inspired. Eliot could barely make out the scars. She gave Eliot a pleased, lazy one-over; he winked as she sauntered down the hallway. 

“This ain't right,” Eliot continued, after a moment. “This shit? This is all costume jewelry! Rings? A sword nobody’s ever heard of that looks like something somebody made it in shop? A fucking _horn_? What’s the point, why doesn’t she just buy it from the family? It’s worthless junk. I don’t like it.” 

“There is no family, delight of my eyes,” Moreau said. He looked like he had a headache. Good. Eliot figured he’d owed the boss one, ever since he’d signed off on this idiotic transfer. “Most of the family were blown up in the war; she’s from a distant offshoot. She’s a...friend...of a powerful friend of _mine_. I need him to owe me a favor, and this is small enough; make his mistress happy, would you?” 

 

++++++

There'd been no reason for the job to go bad. The housekeeper hadn't given a shit, he'd bought her off, it should've been in-and-out, five minutes and no trail, but that idiot Chapman had shot the woman between the eyes. "No witnesses," he'd smirked, which was a fucking pain in the ass, because then they'd had to spend an hour wiping fingerprints and trashing the place, smashing the furniture to bits to make it look like a robbery gone bad. And _then_ they'd discovered the guard dogs, which had been big, ugly, the size of goddamn wolves. "Wouldn't have set 'em off if you hadn't gotten blood all over the place," Eliot had snarled, clutching his ribs, because one of the dogs had knocked him down a full flight of stone stairs. 

All that, and they hadn't been able to find the stupid horn _or_ the sword, which wouldn't have been a problem if the damn maid had still been alive, _Chapman_ , and then the sirens had started up, probably in response to the racket, so they'd had to scram with nothing but a handful of cheap topaz rings that couldn't have been worth more than fifty bucks. 

+++++

“Damien!” the woman cooed. “Darrling, whatever *could* be the matter? Please, I never meant to impose; it seemed like such a small thing, and the general assured me -”

“You are always welcome,” Moreau said, and kissed each cheek. "Jade, Eliot Spencer: he watches over me like a hen with her chicks.”

“Charrmed,” Jade said, smiling as she reached out with both hands, face glad; she was beautiful. Eliot had never seen a woman as beautiful as her. 

Her eyes were green. 

( _her eyes were green, slit-pupiled like cats or snakes._ )

She caught his hands in both of hers, and her skin was velvet-soft, cool, and until their skin touched he thought it’d been years since a woman looked at him like this opera singer, like she knew, she understood, he could lay his cares at her feet and sleep there, it’d - 

She jerked away. 

“Oh,” Jade said. Her face went - strange (alien) - for a minute. Eliot didn’t have words for it. “Ahhhh, you _are_ loved,” she hummed. “Oh, but this is too bad.” 

Damien laughed, bright and unforced, like the fucking asshole he was. “I think I have done the impossible, my friend! Here: the one woman on earth immune to your charms!” 

“Yeah,” Eliot said, without meaning it, just marking time, making noise, because there was something...not quite right, here. 

“The question, Mr Spencer, is are you immune to _my_ charms?” Jade asked. 

“Never say no to a pretty lady,” Eliot said, hearing his own accent, thicker than normal. She leaned back, and the beads in her hair struck against each other, musically; it was absolutely nothing like the buzz of a rattler getting ready to strike. He had no idea why he couldn’t get that idea out of his head. He'd put his hand on the butt of his gun without realizing it, which scared the fuck out of him. 

“A shame,” Jade murmured, as if to herself, and shook a little, resettling the glittering diamonds woven into her skirt. She laughed. Must’ve been something they taught ‘em in school, because it sounded like a fucking brook over clean stone. “Well. You must believe me, I did not know; I would never have intruded.” 

“On _what_?” Damien asked, laughing. 

“I am sorry, darling,” she said, and caught Damien’s hands. Her smile _hurt_ ; God, but Eliot wanted to make her happy, wipe that look of regret off her face, there wasn't enough air in the room. “Come back to me when he’s dead,” she said, to Moreau, nodding in Eliot’s direction. “We’ll do business again, my sweet.”

 

++++

“The _hell_ was that!” 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Moreau said, smiling tight and vicious: “I don’t care about your lovers, Spencer, until you make them into enemies of mine.”

“I don’t know her,” Eliot said, honestly bewildered, and that was enough to break the - the rage, the sleepy rage - on Moreau’s face. “I told you somethin’ wasn’t right there, I _told_ you - whatever she’s moving, she ain’t tellin the truth about it, so fuck off, it was a bad idea and it’s still a bad idea.” 

“She wants you dead,” Moreau said, thoughtful, and _there_ was the sharp spark of wit that Eliot hadn’t seen these last couple of days. 

“She ain't the first,” Eliot says, but he's still...uneasy. 

“Well,” Damien said, curving a possessive hand over the back of Eliot’s neck, “she’ll have to wait for a while, I suppose.” 

“Get off,” Eliot said. It wasn’t quite a flinch; nobody could say he flinched if he just shied away from Moreau’s hold. 

“I have neglected you, I think,” Damien said, and then he had Eliot by the jaw, goddamn, Eliot hated this shit, Damien casually taking stock of him like he was a fucking racehorse. “Those ribs are broken?” which was a fair and honest assessment, at _least_ one rib was broken as shit, but Eliot still felt - pissy? He didn’t know, it wasn’t jealousy, he’d never gotten jealous over any men he’d known if they wanted to fuck women, so why did it bother him so much, why did he care if Moreau had trusted some green-eyed general’s mistress - 

That was the hell of it, working for Moreau: never got more’n ten seconds to yourself, so by the time you’d figured out what the hell you thought ‘bout anything, Moreau had figured it out, too. 

“Ah,” Moreau said, like everything made sense, which had to be goddamn nice for him, all Eliot wanted to do was go curl up somewhere, lick his wounds. 

“Yeah, probably broken,” he said, instead. “You need me?” 

“Yes,” Moreau said, decidedly. He went to his desk, tipped two white pills into his hand, held them out. 

God _damn_ it. 

“My room’s got a shit sightline,” Eliot said, waving the pills away irritably; it was fine, ordinarily, not a big fuckin’ deal, but he couldn’t handle it doped up, he’d be paranoid and jumpy all night. 

“Mine doesn’t,” Damien said, haha, Eliot had walked into that one. 

“Leave it alone,” he growled, big mistake number two, because now Moreau would _never_ leave it alone, and Eliot didn’t like getting fucked with broken ribs, made it hard to breathe, but the other option was - “oh, sakea fuck, give it,” and swallowed the two pills dry. 

Ruby was already waiting in Moreau’s bed, sleepy-eyed. 

Eliot remembered that night. Strange, the shit you got caught up on when you were high: beautiful woman taking him deep in her mouth, hot, wet, and luscious, but what he remembered clearest was the way Damien had watched him, sitting at his desk, ostentiously working over the numbers. Fucker hadn’t even been naked, hadn’t even stared like it was porn, just...looked up, occasionally. Checking in. Pleased. 

He’d dozed, a little, after that; woke up hard when he felt someone moving. 

Damien didn’t even look alarmed, just gave him that cool, assessing stare. “Ruby’s just leaving, aren’t you, sweetheart?” 

“Godamn,” Eliot said, because it’d taken him too long to catch his bearings. “Fuckin’ - right, yeah, where’re my pants?” 

“It’s fine,” Moreau said. “Stay.” 

Eliot had been too tired, worn thin enough that he couldn’t tell if it was an invitation or an order. Hadn’t seemed to matter. 

He’d woken up the next morning, feeling like a million bucks with two broken ribs, Moreau naked in bed next to him. They hadn’t fucked, just gotten to work on figuring a way around the problem of the army in Kabul now that they couldn’t depend on the general. Hadn’t been a big deal, at the time. 

  _Jade hadn't picked up the rings. Eliot figured Chapman must've passed 'em out to the girls, because they disappeared a couple of days after that. He never followed up on 'em; they'd been cheap junk. Didn't really matter, after all._

+++++ 

(Couple years after he started running with Ford and Sophie and Parker and Hardison, they’d all crashed at Nate’s place. Eliot’d checked the windows, checked the doors, gone round and round in a stupor until Parker had tripped him onto the couch and planted her feet across his thighs. “You’re making me dizzy,” she’d mumbled, and Hardison had snuffled, shifted closer to Eliot’s side. Not quite touching, just close enough that Eliot could appreciate his body warmth. Sophie hadn’t even opened her eyes, just pulled off one Louboutini and thrown it at Eliot (her aim’d been getting better) while shushing them.

He’d woken up a couple hours later. Nate’d been slouched in one of his bar stools, nursing whiskey, and the look on his face had, for no reason at all, seemed terrifyingly familiar. No reason for it, no reason for it to send a sick jolt of adrenaline through Eliot at all. All Nate’d been doing was watching them, staring at the three of them sacked out on his couch, Sophie curled up in the armchair, a fond, protective (possessive) _pride_ \- 

Eliot had very carefully lifted Parker’s legs and gone to quietly throw up in the bathroom. 

“I threw up cause I got a _concussion_ , Parker, I got hit in the head with a goddamn alligator, don’t - don’t _poke_ it!” he’d snapped, real quiet, after he’d finished, because of course that had woken her up. Nate hadn’t said anything, hadn’t tried to stop him when he’d grabbed his keys and his wallet (and circled back to Parker for the _cash_ in his wallet, minus the “moving her feet” tax) and run off in the middle of the night to hole up in his place, lick his wounds. A goddamn _alligator_ , for fuck’s sake. He was crazy to be working with this crew. 

He’d taken a week off, thought about leaving, but then there’d been that mess with the crooked mayor, and there was no way he’d leave ‘em alone to take on the fucking FBI by themselves, not without backup. After that, he really hadn’t thought about it. Slept at his own place, put it out of his mind. 

 

++++++

 

Nate hadn’t ever said anything about it, not til the whole mess with Moreau came out, not til they toppled him. 

“We’re not talking about it,” Nate had said, and Eliot had considered jumping out the window. He was a millionaire; he could replace Nate’s goddamn window, and it was probably the only hint Nate would take. 

“Good,” he’d grunted, instead, and stole one of Nate’s beers. Man had good taste in alcohol, at least. 

“ _I_ didn’t know you worked for Moreau,” he said. 

“That was _the point,_ ” Eliot said. “Glad we ain’t talking bout it.” 

“You _left_ ,” Nate said. “He didn’t kick you out, you left.” 

“Drink your goddamn beer and shut up and watch the game,” Eliot had said. “Root for the Niners and I’ma get Parker to steal your TV.”


End file.
